White
by MightyMightyMafia
Summary: So Eden sank to grief.
1. Prologue

_**White**_

-

Summary: So Eden sank to grief.

-

Through a fever Hinata dreams sweetly.

A rough palm brushes her cheek. She feels warm and weak.

She stares into his eyes- so brightly blue.

He tilts her head back.

He kisses her chastely, softly, gently.

He is so hot against her that she feels as though she burning, rising as ash, and floating away.

-

Hinata wakes and her room is dark and blurred. She catches her reflection in her vanity mirror. She is pale and her eyes are shadowed and hollow.

She begins to shiver. She feels hot. She feels cold. Everything that touches her feels as though it is bruising her.

She squeezes her eyes shut. Her jaw slackens and she cannot control the muscles in her face.

She leans over her bed to throw up. Vomit moves slowly and thickly up her throat and she expels it in a violent fit.

The acarid taste of bile causes her eyes to water.

She sobs, hiccups, and then begins to heave again.

"Help...," she murmurs. Her body shakes, wracked with fever and nausea. She dry heaves and it is so intense that stars explode behind her eyes.

She shivers violently.

"I need help!," she cries weakly.

She wipes her mouth. Her hand comes away bloody.

She stares at it in horror.

-

"Ugh, really?," says Naruto in disgust as he opens his door. Snow is falling thickly, dusting the ground with soft powder. He wrinkles his nose in distaste and wanders back inside. He finds an orange jacket and shrugs it on.

He exits his home.

The walk to the training grounds is cold and quiet. Naruto thinks about milky sky above. He thinks about sleep.

Naruto does not like to be alone. His heart thuds deeply in his chest.

-

_There's not much left of the Konoha we knew as children. It's changed. Its a strange and barren place now, colder than it ever has been._

_I don't remember snow from when we were younger. It was always warm and sunny._

_I remember slick sweat and dusty dirt. I remember trees arching overhead, pure streams running thickly, clear skies and the scent of pine filling my nostrils as I left my house each morning. _

_In adulthood, this landscape has become surgical._

_It is steel tools. It is starched white uniforms. And snow._

_I am slowly fading to white. _

_Nothing can stop me from disappearing. _

_I am Sakura Haruno, and my name is the only evidence that I exist._

_Begin._

_-_

Hinata jerks awake. Her eyes quickly sink shut. She is feverish still. She does not know how much time has passed, she cannot remember the recent past.

Her throat is dry and her eyes water.

Her gaze is caught by the window. She stares at it without comprehending.

There is nothing but pale grey.

She doesn't understand.

She blinks.

A memory of Sakura's slurred, broken voice shatters her sense of detachment.

_"... where the fuck is the bathroom, I need to take a fucking piss like no other. I swear to fucking god my bladder is like a fucking- um, a fucking-"_

_"Dumbass, its over there."_

_"What? Where? Oh. There. Alright. Ugh god."_

_Hinata looks down into her glass. She does not like alcohol. It tastes bad and gives her a headache. _

_Shikamaru lights a joint and puffs gently. _

_"Good shit," he murmurs._

_He passes it to Kiba. Kiba puffs and passes it to Ino. _

_"Yeah, pretty good."_

_Ino puffs delicately and then coughs, before taking another drag, holding the smoke momentarily, before letting it drift out of her o-shaped mouthed. She sighs contentedly and leans back in her chair._

_Hinata's eyes burn like the lighter Shikamaru is using to relight the roach. _

_She is alone._

Hinata smells rubbing alcohol and another unnameable stringent disinfectant. She smells herself- sick human smell. A cross between an unwashed body and a dying, wet dog.

She is in a hospital.

She will not wonder who brought her here. What she is suffering from. What will happen to her.

Hinata will sink back into fever- back into sleep.

She is too tired to worry any longer.

-

Outside, the snow falls more thickly.

-

_My name is Sakura Haruno, and it is all that is left of me. _

_I am fading here. _

_There is no light that can wake me from this dream, no sound that can jolt me, no sensation that I haven't already tried. _

_I don't feel._

_I don't taste._

_I am blind._

_Mute._

_I take no breath. _

_I live in name only. _

_-_

Naruto spends hours training in the light snowfall. His eyes are burning so brightly it is as though he is taken with fever. Perhaps he is.

His skin glows with a sheen of sweat, but it is pale and his veins pop threateningly under his skin.

His mind races.

Battle tactics, Sakura, the kyuubi, Konoha, the council, his father, his childhood, school, Kakashi, snow, cold, cold, cold.

Hinata.

He stops, wipes his brow.

His heart is beating furiously. His hands shake.

He walks weakly back to his pack and pulls out a bottle of little pink pills. He pops the cover and swallows three.

His body and mind slow.

He sinks to the ground.

He stares up as the snowflakes fall down.

Suddenly his world is flipped. The snowflakes that have collected on the ground are drifting down into the bottomless pit of the milky gray sky.

He coughs and closes his eyes.

-

_**BEGIN.**_

-

**The explosion rattles the city of Konoha down to its bedrocks. The area is leveled in minutes. As Sasuke steps into the ruins of the place he once called home, a strange satisfaction fills him. **

**In this moment, he is complete. **

**Now what was inside him was outside him as well. **

**A physical manifestation- a chaotic burst of colored paint across a canvas. **

**It was **_**art.**_

**It was beautiful. **

**The blast scene stretched for miles in all directions.**

**Sasuke's eyes glittered maniacally in the weak sun.**

**It was over.**

**He stepped forward and walked through the destroyed streets of Konoha, blood singing in his veins.**

**Amid the rubble stood Danzou. **

**Sasuke smiled and rushed forward.**

**Vengeance was coming on swift wings.**

-

_**Prologue**_

-

The moment was immortalized.

He fell, body a graceful arch, a testament to the poetry of physics.

There was no impact-

Only a soft blackness.

-

Uchiha Sasuke's fall was reflected in the depths of Haruno Sakura's eyes.

-

_Nature's first green is gold,_ _Her hardest hue to hold._ _Her early leaf's a flower;_ _But only so an hour._ _Then leaf subsides to leaf._ _So Eden sank to grief,_ _So dawn goes down to day._ _Nothing gold can stay._

_-Robert Frost_

_-_

_There was a point where Sasuke realized something had gone terribly wrong. Somewhere along the line the paradise he was seeking had disappeared over the horizon: dipped low like a setting sun as darkness raced forward, and simply faded behind the world. _

_Sasuke was conscious. He remained aware that he never hit the ground- that something had shielded him from the impact. _

_He was aware that by laws of physics, he should have hit the ground. _

_He was aware that by laws of biology, he should have felt pain._

_Instead, he hung in limbo. _

_His mind slowed. _

_He relived his life._

_-_

_He was 3 years old. He received his first kunai for his birthday. His father's only gift to him his entire life. His mother cried. His brother was already a warrior._

_-_

_He was 5 years old. It was his first day at the academy. He learned to spell "katana" in school. He wrote the word over and over in all of his drawings. He brought them home to show his father._

_-_

_He was 6 years old and didn't understand why his mother was crying again. It made him angry that she was crying. She was an adult. Adults didn't cry. When he was an adult, he would never cry like his mother. He would be strong. _

_His father hit his mother again and Sasuke cringed beneath the table. _

_He would never cry. _

_He would never be weak._

_-_

_He was 11 years old. It was two days after the massacre. He wanted to die. _

_-_

_He was 13 years old. He was afraid of every shadow. He was wary of every breaking twig. He would never admit to the depths he had dived to gain power. _

_Would his family be ashamed of him if they knew?_

_-_

_He was fifteen years old. He was still searching._

_-_

_He was seventeen years old. He was desperate. He was blind. Itachi was dead. His search continued. _

_-_

_He was nineteen years old. He faced the new Hokage, Danzou, from Konoha in battle. _

_He won. _

_His vision blackened. _

_He fell. _

_-_

Sakura moved forward. She was underwater. She had waited her whole life for this moment.

She caught Sasuke as he fell, lowered him to the ground with empty eyes. Shock had made her ignorant to sensation- she felt neither the soft, moist cotton of Sasuke's shirt, nor the smooth warmth of his skin.

Two of her ribs were broken.

She felt no pain. Did not feel the weak snowfall melting on her fevered skin. Did not hear the cries for help floating around her like a disjointed song.

Sasuke's eyes were closed.

"Pulse at 50 BMP and fading fast-", she murmured.

Diagnostics raced through her head. She spoke them aloud in the crumbling remains of Konoha.

"Subject remains unresponsive. Possible spinal injury- compaction of spinal column or injury of the lumbar region."

Twisted metal stretched into the sky. Jagged debris bit into the cloudy horizon. The smell of smoke and the desolation of destroyed infrastructure blinded one to the observation of the finer details of the scene- missing limbs scattered in the chaos, a child's toy beneath a heap of wood and plaster that was a home.

"Subject's lungs are flooded- unresponsive to emergency CPR. Defribrillation out of the question. Beginning emergency resusciatation via chakra."

In the distance, a man's voice called out. Shifting wood clattered as it settled. Fires still burned. Light from the flames danced in the coming darkness.

"5, 4, 3, 2, 1...", Sakura murmured as she shocked Sasuke's body with an explosive amount of chakra.

"Subject remains unresponsive."

She was empty.

There were no questions remaining in her mind. She did not exist in this moment, or the next. She had not existed since he left her years ago.

Her time had run out long before. She had been waiting, breathless. She was begging for an end.

Her hands formed the seals, her mouth the accompanying words. She closed her eyes.

With her palms face-down on his chest, she gave her life for Sasuke's.

-


	2. Chapter 1

_**White**_

-

Summary: So Eden sank to grief.

-

_**5 Years Later**_

-

"...and then what?"

"And then what what? That's the end! Fucking troublesome."

"That's not like her."

"What... Ino? Shit. It's the third time she's done that to me."

Neji scowled and placed his folded arms on the bar.

"She's been different ever since-"

Shikamaru closed his eyes in contemplation.

Neji shook his head.

"Dump her. Its not worth it."

"I know, but... fuck, its Ino- you know?"

Neji thought of Ten-Ten. He did know.

All the same, he shook his head.

"Not worth it."

Shikamaru sighed.

"I can't man. I just can't."

Shikamaru blinked slowly and rubbed his eyes with an open palm. The callouses on his hands irritated the skin of his face and he sighed.

"Neji, listen, I can't. I-"

Neji looked away. He knew it was coming.

"-fuck. I'm in love with her."

"No. You're in love with who she used to be," Neji said cleanly. His pale eyes stared into the distance and it seemed the Shikamaru that his legendary orbs were not just analyzing the far wall, but everything in the village beyond that wall as well.

Shikamaru said nothing. He stood and his head dropped down to his chest. He blew a frustrated sigh from between his lips, lay some coins on the bar and with stiff shoulders and a hunched back, he exited the bar.

His steps were slow, but not uneasy, and in his mind's eye he was already picturing Ino Yamanaka as he had seen her years before: bright, pretty and argumentative. Fiery. Fierce. _Beautiful._

Shikamaru shook his head and made a quick turn onto the street where Ino's house was located.

He knew she had changed. He knew things would never be the same. He knew he would find Ino today, like he found her everyday, sitting in the uneasy silence of her family's garden.

Ino had retired from her shinobi life. She had lost a lot of weight. Her hair had been chopped to an elegant bob, which gently brushed the tops of her shoulders.

She was the very picture of docility- _defeat._

She had become the woman Shikamaru had always wanted, and now Shikamaru wanted nothing but the woman she had been, and not the shell she had become.

He stopped suddenly in the street and gazed up at the night sky above, clouds rolling uneasily on the horizon. Shikamaru sighed loudly and scratched the back of his neck.

He turned around and headed home instead.

-

Ino sobbed, writhing horribly on the table top.

Sasuke grunted and readjusted Ino's legs around his hips.

"Deeper, deeper," she groaned.

Sasuke smirked, pulled back and slowly shifted his cock back into Ino. Her legs twitched and her back arched.

She keened and Sasuke bent forward, resting his hands heavily on the table. He looked up at Ino's face, beautifully twisted.

His hips shifted forward and he panted.

"Sasuke, harder," she groaned. Sasuke let his eyes drift shut and he pulled out of her and jerked his hips against hers. His cock slid into her roughly and she moaned loudly. Sasuke set a steady rhythm, the table creaking piteously under them.

Ino convulsed, her chest rising, her breasts just brushing Sasuke's chest. Sasuke breathed heavily in her ear, and as her hardened nipples teased the cool, sweaty skin of his chest he growled.

"Shit," he murmured. His eyes clenched and he pulled out of her. He disentangled Ino's legs from around his waist and pushed them forward. Ino breathed shakily.

With Ino's knees slung over his shoulders, he bent back over her and met her blue eyes with his his dark ones.

A moment of silence passed between them where they both breathed heavily and stared into one another's eyes.

Sasuke felt empty.

He smirked and ran his fingers up Ino's quivering thighs. Ino smiled and Sasuke swore that she was nothing more than a ghost in that moment, panting, pale-_ a bone-chilling pearly opalescent white_ -in the early evening sun.

-

_Through a fever Hinata dreams sweetly. _

_"I want to die," Sakura murmurs in tortured voice. "Please, I want to die." _

_Hinata tries to reach out to Sakura, but she is a million miles away, it seems, and Hinata is so paralyzed she can't move._

_Suddenly there is a blast of light and sound. Smoke engulfed Hinata's frozen form: blowing outward, then sucking back in towards the epicenter, then rising slowly. Screams echoed around her. Dark figures made indistinct by the smoke hurried past. A man knocks into her and before she can see his face he is gone. Her gaze travels slowly back to her friend and she almost knows what she will see. _

_Sakura is a grosteque corpse- burned, decaying. Her lips move but no sound is issued. _

_Hinata cannot tear her eyes away._


	3. Chapter 2

_**White**_

-

Summary: So Eden sank to grief.

-

_"I don't know what I'm going to do",_ Sakura murmurs hauntingly in Hinata's memory. Hinata is dreaming again. She will not remember this dream when she awakens.

Sakura's face is blurred, the only part of her truly recognizable being her long, pale pink hair. Hinata squints, trying the make out the rest of the girl that had become her closest friend, yet remained as much of a stranger as any other member of the Konoha. Try as she might, Sakura's image remained illusively indistinct.

Hinata tries to speak, tries to tell Sakura she can't see her, but her saliva is dry and thick and her facial muscles are uncooperative.

_"When I'm awake, I feel like I'm sleeping. When I'm sleeping, I know I'm still awake. I can't breathe."_

Hinata is growing alarmed. She wants to tell Sakura that she will be ok, that everything will be ok, but she can't. She is drifting further and further into a paralysis. She wants to cry.

"I want to die," Sakura murmurs. "Please, I want to die."

Hinata tries to reach out to Sakura, but she is a million miles away, it seems, and Hinata is so paralyzed she can't move. Suddenly there is a blast of light and sound. Smoke engulfed Hinata's frozen form: blowing outward, then sucking back in towards the epicenter, then rising slowly. Screams echoed around her. Dark figures made indistinct by the smoke hurried past. A man knocks into her and before she can see his face he is gone. Her gaze travels slowly back to her friend and she almost knows what she will see.

Sakura is a grosteque corpse- burned, decaying. Her lips move but no sound is issued.

Hinata cannot tear her eyes away.

-

Hinata awakens with a rough gasp and shakily sits up in bed. She rubs her face with her hands and finds that she has been crying in her sleep. She tries to think back to her dream, but all she can remember is an overwhelming feeling of powerlessness.

She had been dreaming so much lately that her eyes had taken to being constantly wide and bloodshot. She had lost weight and had begun to have shaking fits in the quiet moments of her day.

She retrieved a packet of cigarettes from her bedside table and lit one with trembling fingers. She closed her eyes as she inhaled the smoke and gently blew it out of her nose.

She opened her eyes and surveyed her room brokenly. She caught her reflection in the mirror and for a moment, it seemed like she was going to cry, but she fought the feeling and it passed like a shadow.

She sank into memory.

_She was rushing forward along the road when she came to a group of genin yelling loudly. They were young, not much older than toddlers. They had chased another girl across the village and were yelling at her. _

_"Hey," she yelled at the crowd of kids. They ignored her. She hurried forward. The girl who had been cornered was staring at them with wide, shocked eyes. Long bangs hung over her forehead, obscuring the tops of her eyes. She had bitten her lip to a bloody irritation, and a long path of blood twisted down her chin and neck._

_"Hey, what are you doing?," she said. _

_The kids turned around, their faces cold and angry. _

_"She's a traitor, Misses!"_

_Hinata ignored the child who had spoken out. _

_"Leave her alone," she said clearly. _

_"Misses, she spoke to the Uchiha scum! She's gave him village secrets!"_

_"Leave her alone!," Hinata cried. _

_One of the kids screamed something unintelligible and Hinata felt a hand touch her shoulder gently. _

_"What's going on?," a deep voice spoke from her side. Naruto. _

_"Mister, that bitch is a traitor! We saw her talking to the Uchiha!"_

_The girl began to cry great heaving sobs. _

_Naruto's face hardened. _

_"Where did you learn that word?," Naruto asked accusingly. _

_No one answered. _

_Naruto scowled. _

_"Go home," he growled. "Don't let me ever catch you chasing her again."_

_The children scattered like dust, leaving the crying girl alone with Naruto and a world-weary Hinata. Naruto started forward and squatted in front of the girl._

_"Hey," he said. _

_She began to wail loudly._

_Naruto winced and then with one, large, calloused hand, he tilted her head upward. _

_"Hey, don't cry," he said. The girl looked at him with huge eyes and sniffled. _

_"I'm not a traitor!," she cried. "I didn't even know who he was! "_

_"Hey, hey, look at me."_

_The girl refocused her eyes on Naruto._

_"Those kids are wrong, about you and him. You're not a traitor, and neither was he."_

_The girl sniffled piteously and rubbed the blood dripping down her chin._

_"My lip hurts," she whined, then sniffed again. _

_Hinata fell into the background of the scene as Naruto continued to comfort the girl. She looked up to the road ahead to Sasuke Uchiha staring at her with frozen eyes. _

_She blinked- he was gone. _

Hinata's cigarette was down to the filter. She dropped it into the ashtray by her bed and lay back down, closing her eyes.

Behind her heavy lids, her eyes burned with dryness. She reached a tired hand up to rub them. She opened her eyes and gazed at the pale whiteness of her palm, the smooth expanse shattered only by the protrusion of blue-green veins.

Hinata lay awake not much longer, slipping easily, quietly, back to sleep.

-

Ino said nothing as Shikamaru sat next to her in the garden. Instead, she smiled at him, silence weighing her tongue like anchor.

He looked at her through dark, heavy eyes.

Ino loved Shikamaru's eyes- confident, smoldering, dark, _intelligent_ eyes. They burned her, singed her to her core. Shikamaru had that affect on her- he made her quake.

"Hey," he said.

"Hi."

There was silence for a few more minutes and Shikamaru laid down, gaze focused on the passing clouds. Ino followed suit, laying her head on Shikamaru's chest, her hand resting on his stomach.

Through his shinobi gear she heard the steady thrum of his heartbeat and the warmth of his skin.

Her fingers trailed upward to reach the hollow of his throat and his jawline.

In the silence, Ino imagined she confessed her sins to Shikamaru, imagined that every infidelity was forgiven in that moment. In the sun, bleached white, she dreamed a fevered dream that she was without guilt.

Shikamaru shifted and she crashed back into herself.

She was fading, had been fading, fading fast. In the early afternoon light she fell ill, she felt heated, she felt a dead rushing in her ears.

"Ino...," Shikamaru murmurred, "where did you go?"

Ino's throat clenched, her eyes burned.

"What are you talking about? I'm right here," she whispered with a smile.

Shikamaru rose and Ino shifted off of him. She stared in his eyes and felt herself pinned open, dissected. He sighed.

"You know what I'm talking about," he murmurred quietly. "What's wrong with you?"

Ino smiled vacantly.

"Shikamaru, you've been staring into the sky for too long. I'm here, I've always been here."

She laughed and Shikamaru stared.

-

In a fleeting glance Sasuke sees his reflection in the mirror and he is surprised to find his dark gaze is flat. A thin film of madness has hidden his eyes' former dark intensity.

Under the weight of his sins he is finally folding.

_Sakura._

He breathed.

_Sakura. _

He saw her as he had when they had been children. Remembered her wide smile and guarded eyes.

Hinata had been her closest friend before Sakura had-

Sasuke shook his head quickly and clenched his teeth.

Hinata said that Sakura had been happy here in Konoha. That she was a medic.

_A medic._

He thought of Sakura's pale hands handling surgical tools, thought of her small frame entering the large doors of the Konoha General Hospital. Her bright green eyes washed out and tired in the flourescent lights.

Sometimes he walked the village, trying to imagine where she had walked. Touched objects he guessed she might have touched.

_But she was gone. _

Sakura was gone and Sasuke still found himself searching- searching desperately- for some sign that she had existed in this vacant, gaping hole. He felt her absence as the removal of his whole self. He was ripped and fraying in the sharp reality of her passing. He felt her as though she were alive, but wandering outside his grasp or vision.

His need was all-consuming, resolute and unwavering- the by product of his grief and guilt. To alleviate his guilt, he searched for signs she continued to exist- even in death. To alleviate his heavy grief he blamed himself. It was a deadly, beautiful cycle.

His eyes in the mirror again. Flat. Tired.

He sunk into memory.

_In a gleeful, raging madness he stumbled through the quiet, empty streets of a nearly rebuilt Konoha. He was searching- he needed - he wanted - _

_Sakura._

_Sakura, thoughts of her, sustained him. Fed him, clothed him, allowed him to breathe. His guilt was his obsession. He was still an avenger- he would destroy himself for her. _

_He was alive. Painfully, impossibly, heart-wrenchingly alive. _

_And Sakura was not._

_A crashing crescendo of mutinous thought made his stomach churn._

_His fault. It was all his fault. Had always been his fault. _

_He had killed his family. _

_He had killed his brother. _

_He had killed Sakura. _

_The fallacies in these statements did not occur to him. They were as true to him as any reality. _

_His fault. His. _

_The torment never ended, the headaches, the madness, the suffocation, the-_

_"Sasuke-kun?"_

_Sasuke turned his sharp eyes to Yamanaka Ino and all he saw was Sakura. Beautiful relief. _

Sasuke is brought back to reality. He smiles in the mirror.

It is not a smile.

His mouth is just stretching.

It is not a grimace because there is no expression in his eyes.

His mouth is just stretching.

Cheeks pulling back, eyes closing slightly.

He is not smiling.

He is just showing teeth.

He closes his mouth.

He will find Ino tonight. He will fuck her.

He will search for Sakura.

He will live pitifully.

_For Her._

-

"No Ino, you're not. You're gone, this isn't you."

Ino smiles indulgently and raises her eyebrows.

"Fucking stop patronizing me, its annoying. You're not the same and you know it. I don't know what happened to you but you've changed."

Ino's smile wavered.

"Shikamaru, I've matured. We're nearly twenty now, its time to settle down."

"Would you listen to yourself?!"

Shikamaru jumped back in irritation. He stood and began to pace.

"I can't figure you out. I can't understand you. You're-" he motioned vaguely.

Ino narrowed her eyes and stared up at him.

In that moment there stretched a silence laden heavy with a knowledge of what was to come.

"SHE'S BEEN DEAD FOR FIVE YEARS!," Shikamaru yelled suddenly, and the quiet calmness of the garden was broken.

Ino stood quickly, her mouth moving but no sounds escaping.

"Ino, she's gone! She's not coming back!"

Ino stared at him.

"I can't take this. You're sick," he said. "You're sick and you're making me sick too."

He turned to leave.

"Shika," she said. "Shika where are you going?"

"I can't do this anymore."

"Shika! Wait! What- why, I don't-"

She fell silent as a rush of something hard and thick swelled in her throat. There was a heavy wind that sprang up, buffering Ino with a forceful hand. Blood sang in her veins and her eyes widened. She felt her muscles clenching, hardening, bile moving up her throat and suddenly-

"SHE LEFT ME!," Ino screamed, her whole frame shaking. Shikamaru, shocked, stood rooted to the spot. He slowly turned to face her.

Ino was shaking so hard that her teeth were chattering. Her fists were clenched tightly, the veins popping threateningly out from under her skin.

"SHE LEFT ME! SHE LEFT ME HERE, ALONE!"

Tears sluggishly began to course down her tortured face.

"I'M ALONE!"

She hiccuped out a sob.

"DON'T LEAVE ME TOO! I'M SO ALONE AND I-"

Shikamaru next words rang in Ino's ears so long she could almost imagined that she had dreamed them.

"I'm sorry Ino."

He turned and left.

-

The hours following Shikamaru's departure from her garden were lost to Ino. There was only the moment he left, connected to a blank space, connected to her observation of dark figure entering her garden, where she assumed she must have spent hours sitting in. Then again, there was a blank space where she never remembered when she was speaking to Sasuke, and when she was fucking him.

Ino smiled coyly as Sasuke as he entered her again with a rough thrust.

"C'mon baby," she moaned. "I need you."

Sasuke smirked, but behind this Ino could almost see his broken psyche. He was the crumbling remains of a person.

Ino moaned loudly and rocked against him.

"Yeah, yeah, c'mon, harder, yeah-"

Washed a frozen black-blue by the disappearing light, only the whites of Sasuke's eyes were truly visible to Ino. She never noticed the figure watching them just inside her gate.

Shikamaru stood frozen in the entrance to her garden, black-brown eyes widened in shock.

He blinked.

Turned slowly.

Left the Yamanaka compound.

-

Hinata dreamed.

_"I want to die," Sakura murmurs. "Please, I want to die."_

_There is a blast of light and sound. Smoke engulfs Hinata's frozen form: blowing outward, then sucking back in towards the epicenter, then rising slowly. Screams echoe around her. Dark figures made indistinct by the smoke hurried past. A man knocks into her and before she can see his face he is gone. Her gaze travels slowly back to her friend and she almost knows what she will see..._

Hinata awakens crying, her white eyes flashing around her brokenly. In the dawn of the new day she is wilting.

She understands.

"Please," she murmured. "I want to die."

-


	4. Chapter 3

_**White**_

-

Summary: So Eden sank to grief.

-

In this storm there is the realization of _dreams_. Reality falters at its soapbox, breathes shallowly, and looks to the future with disbelief etched into its features.

Retribution, total and complete, _should_ charge forward and waste itself on the pikes of temperance. Instead, it is a force unmatched, and it annihilates all that lie in its path.

So Eden sinks to grief.

-

There is a frustrted static in Sasuke's mind he can neither bring himself to understand nor try to alleviate. Living in the moment was enough. He was vaguely aware that something had gone terribly, horribly wrong, but could not pinpoint what, nor whom to blame.

He seemed to have moved through his life by compulsion alone with no thought of outcome or consequence. All events of his life had lead him to this desolate reality- where what he sought had become so impossible he could do nothing else but continue to reach for it.

The alternative was inexistence.

-

_There is a blast of light and sound. Smoke engulfs Hinata's frozen form: blowing outward, then sucking back in towards the epicenter, then rising slowly. Screams echoe around her. Dark figures made indistinct by the smoke hurried past. A man knocks into her and before she can see his face he is gone. Her gaze travels slowly back to her friend and she almost knows what she will see..._

_A voice speaks softly- her mother's voice. The words are clear to Hinata, but as soon as they are spoken she cannot recall them. She is looking at Sakura's corpse. She is deaf. _

_There is a rushing in her ears. She will waken soon._

_She must waken soon..._

_"THERE'S NO WAKING FROM THIS DREAM!," Sakura screams, spit flying from her mouth. Hinata is remembering Sakura and is thrust backwards to the last moments she spent with her. _

_"I can't think, I can't breathe- every moment is another moment I should have been moving in some direction, towards some kind of END- I want to end... please- please- Please Hinata-"_

_Tears streaked down Sakura's face. Her eyes are glazed- Sakura was drunk, but something in the way she was speaking made Hinata believe that Sakura was lucid enough to know every word she was saying. _

_"I want to die," Sakura murmurs in tortured voice. "Please, I want to die."_

_As she is speaking, a dark form is rushing behind Hinata- moving forward. _

_Hinata is reliving the same dream she had dreamt for five years._

_This dark form is a man._

_He will knock into her. _

_She will look up and there will be-_

Hinata sat straight up in bed, a blinding headache crushing her skull. Eyes wide, she held her pounding heart with her hands and breathed achily.

"A man. There was a man."

_-_

Naruto lazily scanned a form in front of him laying out the new trade agreements of the different nations. It was dreadfully boring to attend meetings on trade agreements with stuffy diplomats, but as Hokage he had no choice.

His mind drifted back to his reclusive fiance and he smiled.

"Hokage-sama, we need your signature on the-"

"Yeah sure, hand it over," he responded without thought.

"But Hokage-sama, don't you want to look over the semantics of this? It could be particularly precarious to-"

Naruto rolled his eyes.

"Fine, read it to me, I want to get out of here, we've been at it all day."

"Well, Hokage-sama, its just that-"

"What?"

"Well its rather long- I think if you just skimmed it and-"

"Just fucking summarize it Hidaki."

His assistant shuffled uncomfortably.

"Yes, um, well, very good. It appears that the multi-national trade agreement we've been working on has hit a snag. A very large snag, to be honest."

Naruto frowned.

"What's gone wrong this time?"

"Well, in addition to the fact that Mist still believes we're profiting off hiding renegade shinobi-"

"Ugh, Sasuke is not renegade, he's from this village!"

"That may be so, but his continued presence in the village has been a diplomatic nightmare."

Naruto rolled his eyes.

"Get on with it Hidaki."

"Well, right, so Sound has overthrown it last Hokage- whom, as you will remember, was very interested in the trade agreement. The new Hokage however..."

Hidaki trailed off.

Naruto sighed.

"Let me guess, the new Hokage wants a bigger cut for Sound. Well, we simply can't do it, Sound is tiny and comparatively speaking-"

"Actually, Hokage-sama, the new Hokage is disinterested in any kind of trade agreement whatsoever."

Naruto frowned deeply, his mind drifting back to Hinata once again.

Outside, darkness was falling.

Frustrated, Naruto stood from his chair and threw on his coat.

"We'll deal with it tomorrow."

-

Naruto runs his fingers through Hinata's short locks and breathes heavily. They move together, a testament to the poetry found in biology. He never feels as accepted, as wanted, _as loved_, as he does when he is with her. Hinata's tiny hands gripped his shoulders and flexed unknowingly when he readjusted his position. She breathed throatily in his ear- he loved the sounds she made.

She tastes of cigarettes, solitude and slumber- his shy little doll. Her skin is bared to him and he never feels that he has explored it to his satisfaction- no amount of her bashful nakedness ever seemed to be enough.

His eyes lock with hers.

They are soft, they are deep, they are white.

-

Shikamaru wanders Konoha listlessly, murky brown eyes gazing upwards.

"You did it," Neji said.

Shikamaru breathed deeply, his lungs stretching to fill with air.

"Yeah," he said, and released the air.

Neji blinked and nodded.

"How'd she take it?"

A dark look crossed Shikamaru's face. A flash of memory flickered in his eyes, his fists tightened. These details were not lost on Neji.

"Pretty well."

Neji sighed.

"Shikamaru..."

Shikarmaru hung his head.

"She's been seeing him for a while."

Neji nodded mutely.

"How long?"

Neji's responding silence was all the answer he needed.

"Fuck, man."

Shikamaru sucked in a paralyzing breath and let the reality sink in.

"She's really sick," he said tonelessly.

Neji blinked and wordlessly looked away.

"She's alone," he murmured. "Her family is dead. Her best friend is dead. You were all she had left."

Shikamaru shook his head.

"It doesn't make any sense. If she really felt that way, then why did she-"

Neji snorted.

"Wake up dumb ass," he said quietly. "You really think Ino wanted to have sex with Sasuke? He's mentally ill! He wanders the village every night muttering to himself."

Shikamaru shook his head.

"Nothing was wrong with her, everything was fine until he-"

"Nothing was fine," Neji responded shortly. "Nothing was fine and nothing has been fine."

Neji jerked up the collar of his coat and stuffed his hands in his pockets.

"Call me when you're done denying everything," he said, and turned down a side street and disappeared.

-

Sasuke is wandering toward hospital, disheveled and lost, when Hinata observes him. She was walking toward the Hokage Tower, trying to find Naruto. She had to tell him- tell him what she remembered.

Naruto could make sense of what she was seeing. If anyone could help her, assauge her fears- it was Naruto.

And then, she found Sasuke.

He was shuffling forward, eyes tired and blank, hair wild and skin pale. She stopped dead in her tracks.

Her heart pounded in her chest.

He was mad, she knew this. In his state, he hardly was a danger to her. But something about Sasuke had always been dangerous to Hinata.

He was the physical embodiment of everything she couldn't understand, and it frightened her that there could be someone she could not, and probably never would, have the ability to understand.

He looked up at her as she stopped.

"Sasuke-san," she murmured respectfully. "Good evening."

Sasuke stared at her, silent. His eyes were blank, almost unseeing. Hinata wondered if he was hallucinating.

"I am on my way to see Naruto," she said quietly. "He has been working late alot recently."

Hinata could not understand why she was speaking to him.

Sasuke nodded imperceptibly.

"How is he?," Sasuke asked.

"He is busy, but he is fine," she said.

A cool breeze blew by them and Hinata shivered.

"I had a dream," she blurted out quietly.

The world tilted on an extreme axis and Hinata realized that she was going to tell Sasuke Uchiha her dream about Sakura. It felt right, it felt strange- she was powerless to stop herself.

Something sparked in Sasuke's eyes, and he suddenly seemed more lucid.

"I dream often," he said.

"I dreamt about the day you returned," she breathed.

The air went still and there was silence for a few moments.

"I saw her," Hinata confessed achingly. "I saw her run by me- I saw her and then she was gone- she was gone and then there was a man and he-"

"You saw her?," Sasuke breathed. "You saw her? Where is she?"

Sasuke's eyes took on a manic gleam.

"Where did she go?"

Hinata shook her head.

"No Sasuke, I saw her in a dream- she was in a dream I had about-"

"Which direction? How long ago? Karin, can you track her chakra signature? She can't have gone far-"

"Sasuke-san, this wasn't real it was a dream, she was never here-"

"Where did she go? Where did she go?!"

Sasuke was on her before she could defend herself. He shook her violently.

"WHERE IS SHE? WHERE DID SHE GO?!"

And just as soon as he was on her, he was off again. Naruto rounded on his dark friend, face a mask of fuery.

"WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR PROBLEM?!," he roared.

Sasuke righted himself quickly.

"Hinata saw her, she saw her, here, she saw Sakura- she was just here and she left, Hinata was telling me-"

Naruto froze.

"Sasuke, Sakura is dead."

There was a beat of silence.

"Dead?," Sasuke murmured.

"Dead," Naruto repeated. "She is dead."

"When did she-," Sasuke choked. "How- What- Dead..."

"Naruto-kun, it was my fault, I told him I had a dream about Sakura-"

Naruto turned to face her, his expression one of absolute torture.

"Hinata," he whispered. "Don't ever bring up Sakura again."

Hinata looked at him with shock.

"Yes, I-" she swallowed thickly. "I understand."

-


End file.
